I agree with pohnpei's post above and would like to add
that another very important success of the New Deal was that it restored a measure of
popular faith in the government during a time of severe economic Depression. If this
had not happened, or there had not been a New Deal, political revolution, whether
violent or non-violent, was quite possible. People who are economically desperate have
nothing to lose, and are willing to consider political alternatives. This explains the
popularity of Huey Long's "Share Our Wealth" program and the growth of the US Communist
Party during the early 1930s.
A failure of the New Deal, in
addition to not curing America of her economic ills, was that it relied almost
completely on deficit financing - borrowed money - to pay for its programs. This began a
cycle of national debt, made worse by World War II, that we have never recovered from,
and it is now a serious national issue.
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